Barber / Glass / Zorn: Violin Concertos – Geneva Lewis

A BBC New Generation Artist in 2022–24, violinist Geneva Lewis is also the recipient of a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant, a 2022 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, and has been Musical America’s New Artist of the Month. For her recording debut on Delos, she revels in a high-flying all-American program, accompanied by Gemma New conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

Starting with Samuel Barber’s neo-Romantic violin Concerto – the notorious finale provides hardly any respite to the soloist – it is followed by the first recording of John Zorn’s Partita for the Firebird, a solo violin work in which “every note burns and demands your entire self” (Geneva’s own words), and Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Written to please his father, the work is less symphonic than operatic, befitting a composer then in the full flight of operatic composition. Recipient of the prestigious 2021 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award, Gemma New conducts the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in both concertos.